How to change the default path of view files in a Rails 3 controller?

Question

I have a controller called ProjectsController. Its actions, by default, look for views inside app/views/projects. I'd like to change that path for all methods (index, show, new, edit etc...) in the controller.

For example:

class ProjectsController < ApplicationController

  #I'd like to be able to do something like this
  views_path 'views/mycustomfolder'

  def index
    #some code
  end

  def show
    #some code
  end

  def new
    #some code
  end

  def edit
    #some code
  end
end

Please note I am not changing each method with render but defining a default path for all of them. Is this possible? If so, how?

Thank you!

Answer 1

See ActionView::ViewPaths::ClassMethods#prepend_view_path.

class ProjectsController < ApplicationController
    prepend_view_path 'app/views/mycustomfolder'
    ...

Answer 2

You can do this inside your controller:

  def self.controller_path
    "mycustomfolder"
  end

Answer 3

If there's no built-in method for this, perhaps you can override render for that controller?

class MyController < ApplicationController
  # actions ..

  private

  def render(*args)
    options = args.extract_options!
    options[:template] = "/mycustomfolder/#{params[:action]}"
    super(*(args << options))
  end
end

Not sure how well this works out in practice, or if it works at all.